Use your GPRS/EDGE enabled phone as modem in Linux

Ever wanted to use your GPRS enabled phone as a modem in Linux? After searching in vain, you thought you cannot do it, but it’s not the case. You indeed can use your phone as a modem in Linux, that too very easily. Here I will guide you step by step as to configure your phone & then use it as a modem in Linux. This guide applies to most of the Linux distro’s like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE etc.

Pre-Requisites:

To configure your phone in Linux, you require the following things ready at your disposal.

1) Your phone should be GPRS/EDGE enabled & should be able to act as a modem.

2) Data Cable of your phone. Sometimes it is not supplied in the phone’s package, so you will need to purchase it separately.

3) Wvdial tool installed in your Linux OS. Most popular Linux OS’s like Ubuntu, Fedora etc come preinstalled with Wvdial, so you need not to worry about this.

Let’s get started:

1) Connect the phone to your computer via the data cable. If the phone prompts to select any mode, select the “PC Suite application” mode. If you own a slider phone, make sure to connect the phone with the slider kept open.

4) After the above command is passed, your phone should be detected & a generic configuration should be written to the “etc/wvdial.conf”. Here note down the address of your phone, the baud rate & the INIT string which you will need soon. For e.g. : Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 (May differ)

5) After this open the wvdial.conf in any text editor by issuing,

Kate /etc/wvdial.conf

You can use any text editor like Kword, gedit, kwrite etc to edit the wvdial.conf

6) Now you should see the wvdial.conf opened in the text editor of your choice with the default configuration. Here press CTRL+A & delete all the configuration lines. Now copy-paste the lines which I am providing you with below.

[Dialer Defaults]

Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0

Phone = *99#

Username = aa

Password = bbc

Baud = 230400

Init1 = ATZ

Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0

ISDN = 0

Modem Type = Analog Modem

Carrier Check = No

Stupid Mode = 1

7) Now review the instructions, you wrote in the 4th step & do the required changes to the wvdial.conf file. After you are done, save the file & exit the text editor. Most probably you will need to edit the Modem, Phone, Baud rate, Init2 lines in the wvdial.

8 ) After completing the above, you are ready to go online. Simply open up a terminal & type;

wvdial

It should dial to your phone modem & if the modem is properly configured you will be connected to the net. Now minimize the terminal window(Do not close it), fire up your web browser & it should work. After you are done with the browsing, maximize the terminal window & press CTRL+C to disconnect the GPRS connection.